Under the umbrella of third generation partnership project (3GPP) wireless communication technology standards, radio-access technologies for mobile broadband have evolved effectively to provide connectivity to billions of subscribers and devices. Within this ecosystem, the standardization of a radio technology for massive machine-type communication (MTC) applications is also evolving. The aim is for this technology to provide cost-effective connectivity to billions of “Internet of things” (IoT) devices, supporting low power consumption, the use of low-cost devices, and provision of excellent coverage.
One mechanism used to save user equipment (UE) power in LTE and advanced LTE cellular networks is discontinuous reception (DRX). With DRX, a can be configured to turn at least part of its circuitry off during a DRX period to save power. During the DRX period, the network should not try to contact the UE, so the UE does not need to listen for the paging messages or downlink control channels used by the network to reach the UE. Accordingly, the UE turns off its transmitter and receiver for defined intervals, referred to as DRX periods. Between DRX periods, the UE can turns on its receiver for a short paging period. The initial DRX operating parameters limit the longest possible DRX period to 2.56 seconds. The 3GPP Release 13 specification improves upon the original DRX mode by introducing an extended idle mode DRX (eDRX). With eDRX, the UE and the network can negotiate the eDRX parameters that control the duration of the DRX cycle beyond the previous upper limit of 2.56 to optimize UE power consumption while balancing network signaling needs. However, current techniques employed to negotiate eDRX parameters between the UE and the network impart an unnecessary load on the network.